REVIEW: SWORD #1

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Sword #1
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Steven Sanders

“No Time to Breathe”

So I bought this book due to my love of Astonishing X-Men, and the fact that Abigail Brand has been steadily growing on me. I figured that a book that highlights her day job, as opposed to her misadventures with X-Men, would make for a pretty good read. And hey, Henry freaking Gyrich is there too! There’s potential! So how does it work out?

Well, for one thing, the art is horribly inconsistent, and characters like Beast and Sydren (the empath in SWORD’s employ from Astonishing) look like horses with giant long faces that, well, just look weird. The humans in the book are all well handled, but everything else is just cartoony, whether it’s intentional or not, it really does hurt the feel of the book. Serious moments destroyed by characters you can’t help but laugh at because of horrible design work. You see the cover, and there is this awesome John Cassady art of Brand, Beast, Syrden, and Lockheed, and then you open it up and…ugh.

But how about the writing? Is the writing worth it? Well, this reviewer is not at all familiar with Kieron Gillen, and honestly, all I know about him is that he’s taking over Thor from JMS. So I’m treating this book as a first impression, and he does a good job with it. He tries to juggle a dozen plots at once, but it doesn’t feel forced, and it works quite well. An interstellar organization that is working to control alien activity on and around Earth doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of place where there’s going to be a slow day, and that’s how we were greeted from the get go. There are no slow days.

Also, Gyrich will always be a complete asshole who will do anything to improve his standing with the government, but if him doing that surprises you, then you obviously have never read the character before. He’s going to be a prick, that’s who he is. He’s going to do unpopular things and somehow always get his way approved in the end so that everyone can see how inept he is via the fallout.

Beast is somewhat oddly characterized in this book, as Gillen seems content to have him be the corniest version ever conceived. He follows behind Brand like a puppy on a leash, and it’s……it just seems insulting to the character. Now understand, when Beast and Brand get all lovey-dovey in Astonishing, I dig it. It works, it’s this level of sweet insanity that Ellis has down to a science. But in this book it’s like, Beast is trying to be sweet, Brand is trying to work, and it just….it doesn’t feel right. I keep waiting for Beast to become sarcastic or cynical and it never comes.

The back up story is especially nice as well, as we see Brand and Lockheed talking about the Breakworld Bullet from Whedon’s Astonishing run, and Brand tries to explain how hard they’ve tried to free Kitty and how impossible the task has been.

So is the book a flop? Not at all. Despite the problems with it, this is definitely a good first issue, and it does set up a plethora of promising things. In fact, just going on the writing, this book would be an easy seven and a half on the ten scale, but unfortunately, this is where the art comes in to hurt the book.

Overall?

6/10

A lifelong reader and self proclaimed continuity guru, Grey is the Editor in Chief of Comics Nexus. Known for his love of Booster Gold, Spider-Girl (the real one), Stephanie Brown, and The Boys. Don't miss The Gold Standard.